


the inventor's daughter

by spideypeach



Category: tom holland - Fandom
Genre: Actor Tom Holland, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M, Fantasy, PEASANT, peasant tom holland
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-01-24 12:05:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18571117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spideypeach/pseuds/spideypeach
Summary: I fell for the inventor's daughterWhen I chased my silver dollarDown the hill and onto her father'sbasement porch





	1. the yellow light

He was tossing the coin in the air, watching it flip and land back in his hand. Up, flip, down, land, and he would check to see if it was heads or tails. It didn’t really matter which it was, he just wondered, took note, then repeated his mundane ritual as he made his way home from work. The silver dollar was all he would make that day, so the round piece of metal had particular value to it that most of the people of his town didn’t understand. Flipping the coin would get a scolding from his father, as it was one step away from losing it, but he had been long dead for four years now. So, Tom tossed it above his head every afternoon, transfixed by something so small having so much value. 

Although he was 22, Tom’s earnings went straight to supporting his family. After losing his father, his mother had gone into hysterics, cooping herself up in her bedroom for hours on end. His twin brothers worked as well, making about the same amount on a farm 20 minutes outside of the town they lived in. His youngest brother was in school. They had the highest hopes for Paddy and set aside one silver dollar from the three that they made in an attempt to keep him at school. When he was done with the small schoolhouse, they wanted to get him into a boarding school, and then to college. It was a high aspiration, but three determined minds were willing to make anything happen. 

As he continued to walk forward, he felt an impact on his left shoulder, followed by a, “Hey, beggar, watch it!” and the sinking of his heart into his stomach.

His family didn’t use to be beggars. In fact, they didn’t need to be beggars. It started a month after the tragedy that he came home to find his mother wailing at the market. Long, screams, begging for money and food, insisting that they were in desperate need. While they were poor, possibly the poorest of their town, they were still managing. The begging was only a result of the illusion his mother had come up with in her head. They had thought that taking her home and explaining this to her would suffice, but it never did. Each brother took turns every day bringing her home and putting her back to bed. It had made them outcasts, but they had started to learn not to care. All that mattered to them now was going to work, getting their coin, and bringing it home to take care of each other, most importantly, their youngest. 

Today it was Harry’s turn to find their mother. 

Tom was almost halfway home, passing through the industrial part of town. The smiths and inventors took up the central part of town, making the most money out of the commoners. Their houses had solid foundations and looked brand new. The nicest homes had front porches that their residents would lounge on when the weather was sunny. 

The breeze didn’t feel too strong, but his coin begged to differ. He flicked it up again, it spun ten times, before drifting slightly in front of his hand and bouncing off of his middle fingernail. He pulled his hand away in shock, shaking out the pain before the realization hit that he had dropped his payment. His heart unable to fall any further, raced, the fear of losing the money an overwhelming anxiety. Eyes locked on the ground, he found it a few feet ahead of him, rolling towards a quaint house with an extravagant looking porch in front and in back of it. It was a house he would never consider going near on any normal day, but today was an exception. That coin was life for the Holland brothers. 

The sparkling silver teetered past the house into the back and fell flat underneath the porch disappearing from sight. Tom stopped at the gate, unsure if he should knock for permission or attempt to sneak in and back out. The house belonged to the town’s prized inventor, his wife, and his two children. Whatever option he chose would be a gamble; the inventor was an angry man that only interacted with higher up types. The son was brutish and constantly red-faced due to his short temper, his hot head often getting in the way of reason. The women, however, were hardly seen. He didn’t know much about either one of them. 

Tom couldn’t take too much time to decide. If he put too much thought, a passerby would be suspicious as to why he was standing in front of the house in the first place, or he would be noticed by one of the house’s residents. He squeezed his eyes closed, let the blood zipping through his body calm, and hopped over the short fence, his feet pounding on the ground beneath him. He saw the sun reflect off what could be his goal, but there was no way of knowing. He skidded to his knees to begin his search, but it was nowhere to be seen. Tom was looking into a pool of complete darkness, the silver dollar likely never to be found again. 

He stood, ready to give up until he came face to face with the most beautiful set of eyes he had ever seen. 

You had appeared out of your house without giving Tom any notice, and his heart melted at the sight of you. After four years of working tirelessly, he hadn’t paid attention to anyone in his town; there hadn’t been any need. It wasn’t a mystery to him as to why he had never seen you before, but now that he had, he knew that he would never forget you.

He didn’t know what to say. His heartbeat was spiraling in directions he didn’t know was possible, and his brain was filled to the brim with thoughts and completely empty at the same time. His tongue was paralyzed and numb, forbidding him to say anything stupid, but also forbidding him from speaking anything charming. 

Your hand was closed, holding onto something. The sun’s yellow light was the only thing dividing the space between him and you, the rays appearing to bounce off of your fingernails. He watched, intensely, as you opened your delicate fingers and allowed the sunbeams to bounce off the prize instead; his hard work wrapped into metal. You placed it in his hand, using both of your hands to cradle his, which were dirty and calloused. The moment lingered, their skin sharing the light. 

“I’m...Tom,” his voice was soft as if speaking too loudly would blow you away. 

“And I’m Allie. Your shoe is untied.”

He looked down and pulled his hands away from your’s to see. You were right. The laces to his left boot were undone and sprawled on the dirt. He laughed nervously and went to tie them, twisting the laces around his fingers and pulling them into a knot. 

Standing, he was greeted with white pain spread throughout his face, temporarily leaving his vision unusable. A fist had come in direct contact with Tom’s lip, followed by a second in the space between his eye and his nose. Any farther to the left could have resulted in it breaking. 

Instead, Tom was left sprawled on the ground, dazed, and the taste of blood filling his mouth. Pushing himself onto his elbows, he opened his eyes halfway, a headache starting to set in and the light of the setting sun only making it worse. Your face looked horrified, while your brothers looked maliciously satisfied. The young man, only a year older than Tom, was proud of what he had done for you. He spat on the ground to drive his point home and spread his coat around your shoulders to lead you inside. Your blurry eyes and his met once more, a small tear rolling down your rosy cheek as you disappeared into the gorgeous home that he could only dream of owning.

The hit to the face was intended to discourage him, but it only made him more determined. He fell for the inventor’s daughter.

…

At home, the small shack on the edge of town, Tom came home to the smell of stew being made in the kitchen. It was the same meal every night. Vegetables from the garden, and when they were lucky, meat from the market. When food was short, they would fill their stew with mint leaves and pretend it was enough sustenance for all four of them. 

He slumped into a wooden chair, watching as Sam stirred and listened to his mother snoring in the next room. It was a pleasant sound to him, especially when put next to the sound of her crying.  
“Tom what in the bloody hell?” Harry had appeared in the doorway, a broom in his hand. His mouth had dropped open, and before Tom could respond, his brother had run off in what felt like in search of something to fix Tom’s throbbing face.

Sam turned around, eyes widening at what they saw, “Now isn’t that a sight to see.” 

Something cold pressed against Tom’s face, relieving some of the pain that he had forgotten was there. He relaxed backward, letting his head dangle back, his line of sight on the ceiling. 

“What happened?” Harry sat across from him on the other side of their wobbly dining room table. 

“Some bloke tried to pick a fight. You should see him,” he joked, but he winced after trying to smile. 

“That’s your only work shirt and now there’s blood all over it,” Harry was a worrier, and he didn’t laugh at Tom’s effort to make light of things. He looked down to find that his lip had bled onto the collar of his white, canvas shirt. 

“I do the laundry, anyway. I’ll get it out. Go back to sweeping,” he appreciated the help, but he didn’t appreciate the frustration that came with it. Harry stood without another word and left, grabbing the broom he had dropped on his way out. 

There was a brief silence, before Sam filled it, “Why’d it happen?”

Tom sighed, “I dropped my coin,” he set it on the table to reaffirm that it was still there, “and ran into the inventor’s daughter. You know, the one who lives in the big house with two porches that is on the way home from where I work?” 

Sam stopped stirring, “What?”

“Her brother…”

“Beat the shit out of you?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” 

Sam chuckled and reshifted his focus back to the stew, “Forget it. Forget about her. It’s in your best interest.” 

While his brother was more than correct, Tom knew that forgetting about the interaction was never going to happen. The remainder of the walk home, all he could think about was the way how the small flecks of gold in your eyes emulated the way the light shone on your hands. He couldn’t escape his feelings for you, to a point where he was frustrated with himself. 

“I don’t think I want to,” he said cautiously. If Harry had overheard him, there was a high chance his other eye would be at risk. Luckily, all he heard was a hefty sigh from Sam. 

“Listen Tom,” he hoisted the pot onto a counter, taking four bowls from the shelf, “I know we don’t talk about falling in love because...it never really fit into the picture, and even though you’re going for an apple that’s pretty high on the tree, you should listen to what your heart is telling you.” 

A smile snuck onto Tom’s face. Getting beaten to a pulp was a good reason to be ashamed, but somehow he had a sense of pride in his heart. His head was raised a little taller than before he took the swing from the inventor’s son. 

…

It was another month before he saw you again, and it took everything in him not to worry too much about it. While he was smitten, it was mildly dangerous to go chasing after your hand. He was trying to careful and calculated about how he pursued you. 

He walked home again, tossing the coin to a perfect rhythm as he did every day. Somedays he secretly hoped that he would drop the coin, just to have an excuse to wander towards your house, but he didn’t want to build a foundation on a lie. The only time he would be dropping the coin was when it was genuine. 

When your house came into sight, the sun was just starting to set, the same golden hue that had descended on you the previous fateful afternoon. His eyes lingered for a moment, maybe more than a moment, the perfect distraction for the coin to escape from his fingers and right under the front porch. Lips parted in shock, trying to suppress the unnatural excitement, Tom lept over the fence hoping that a new opportunity to see you would arise. 

The funny thing was, you had bounded out as well, almost as if you had been sitting, waiting, and anticipating Tom’s coin to fly away from his hand. Neither of you noticed each other until your hands knocked against each other, each going for the silver dollar to bring you two back together. Nervous laughs followed locked eyes, and your hands remained touching for just a little too long. 

The yellow light was shining on your face, but your smile was somehow brighter. You looked at your feet and laughed again, something catching your eye.

“Um...your shoe is untied again.”

Tom didn’t bend down to tie it like last time. He had already learned his lesson. Taking his eyes off you was and always would be the biggest mistake. 

The light begged him to come closer, to allow it to shine onto his face as well. He was nervous. Everything he had known felt as if it was being put on the line. There was so much at risk, most importantly, his family. Despite all of this, only one thought occupied his head. He said it aloud for good measure. 

“I was made to love you.”

He stepped into the yellow light, and let his own life begin.


	2. the wishing well

As your brother yanked you by the arm, a subtle tear sliding down your cheek, you met Thomas’s eyes, one of them now swelling, one last time before being thrown into the house. You almost tripped over your feet and fell on your face, but neither your brother nor anyone else in your house would care much for that. It wasn’t like there were a lot of people seeing you on a daily basis. 

“What’s all that ruckus?” your father called from his study, probably asking out of curiosity rather than genuine concern. 

“The beggar’s son was harassing Y/n!” your brother, John, answered for you, giving you a devilish smile as he escaped farther into the house. You couldn’t tell if he had actually attempted to defend your honor, or was preventing you from speaking to who you wanted to speak to. Either way, your brother had a short temper and reacted on it without much thought. The punch to the young man’s face was hardly the least that your brother could do. He had gotten away with so much worse. 

You didn’t say anything as you smoothed out the bottom of your pale pink dress. There wasn’t much you could say that either John or your father would believe. As you gravitated towards the room your mother was residing in, you wiped the new tear that had started to form and inhaled, attempting to ignore the feelings that were swirling inside your stomach. Your mother sat in the parlor, a glass of what was probably alcohol in her hand, her eyes unfocused and glossed over. It was the state she remained in almost every day: forlorn and inebriated. 

“What do you want, child,” her deep voice was unsettled and anxious. 

“The beggar’s son was not harassing me,” even if she didn’t listen, you wanted to tell someone. 

“And?”

“He dropped his coin. It fell under the porch. I went outside because I wanted to make sure he got it back.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes.” 

I think I want to see him again.

You couldn’t say that thought out loud no matter how much you wished you could.

There was something captivating about him. The careful way that he had taken the coin from your hands, the shy quiver to his voice when speaking, the fact that he had lifted his head to check on you before you were whisked away, no one had ever treated you with such respect. You lived in a house where you were tossed around and discarded. When he had looked at you, it felt as if you meant something. 

Patiently, you waited daily to see him walking down the cobbled street. You wished that you could run up and walk alongside him, but your family would question why you had gone outside, where you had gone, and it would most likely result in a lash across your knuckles. When he had dropped his coin, it had been lucky that no additional questions had been asked of you. John’s short explanation had been enough to keep your father from prying. That being said, you had to have a reason to go and see him again. Hopefully, it would be that he would drop his coin. 

A month went by and you didn’t give up hope. In a way, it had started to become like a game for you. Since there wasn’t much that you did on a daily basis, you sat on the back porch in the rocking chair, sometimes napping in the warm sun, sometimes listening to the sounds of the people walking by. You liked to sit and make up stories based on the little information you heard, wondering what it was like to be free like they were. Hopefully, your future husband, whoever that might be, didn’t keep you locked inside your own home. 

Whenever Thomas walked by, you kept a steady eye on the coin that he flung into the air as he walked home from work, praying that he would finally drop it, and let it roll into the space underneath your back porch. 

One day, it did.

You jumped out of the rocking chair and into the dirt where both of your hands met, followed by your eyes. His were a dark chocolate brown, that glinted in the sunlight, looking as if they had seen so much pain and suffering, but still managed to find a glimmer of hope somewhere in between. 

The bright, yellow sun shone between you, almost symbolizing the unspoken barrier that kept you from ever speaking to each other until now. It took a lot for you not to beg for him to step into that yellow light, to break down the wall, but you were speechless staring into his eyes. You couldn’t speak even if you tried. 

“I was made to love you,” he whispered, and entered that light, letting his soft lips briefly touch yours, a hint of a kiss, the fear of anything and everything almost too much to bear. 

He let his face stay close to yours for barely a second more and murmured, “Meet me at the well about a half mile outside of town. Midnight.” 

Squeezing your hand as he took his coin from you, you watched as he continued down his path, something lighter about his step than you had noticed it before. 

Midnight. 

Tonight. 

The well. 

You would be there.

…

You were deathly quiet as you shut the front door of your house. Your father, fortunately, was away on a business trip, and would be for a great length of time. It was only your hot-headed brother you had to be fearful of. 

You had been to the well once before. When you were little, your father had yet to become the successful inventor that he was currently, and he let you play amongst other children. You remembered a sunny afternoon when you went with them to visit the wishing well, and spent two silver dollars wishing that you would fall in love with a prince. Secretly, you wished Tom to be that prince. 

The outline of his figure was sitting on the stone edge of the well, nervously bouncing his leg up and down. You started to run, wanting to know the feeling of being in his arms, and the bliss that it would finally bring. 

His work made him strong, and you felt that as he brought you close to him, wrapping his arms around you. He smelled of homemade soap and freshly watered plants, probably from the fields he most likely worked in. It was fresh and clean and heaven. Looking up at him, his eyes twinkled, disbelief seeming to dance in his gaze 

On the back of your neck rested his calloused hand, and it slowly guided you up to his lips where you finally were able to interlock, taking in his taste, feeling the sound of his breath as he pressed towards your soft face. The only eyes on you was the darkness. There was no pressure from the outside world to act a certain way or to follow certain rules. Thomas had given you a certain freedom that you had never experienced before.

It became a ritual. Every single night you found your way outside of the house and walked to the water well. In your head you saw it as a wishing well, seeing all of your potential inside of the reflection of water it held, but you knew it was a soaked fantasy that could never come true. Still, you met.

He told you to call him Tom. Sometimes you sat, holding hands and discussing your lives and the universe. You discovered that he was devoted to his family in a way that you wished you could relate to. He loved the people he was related to, while you were left with a mixed combination of feelings you couldn’t identify. You watched the careful way he spoke about his brothers, and the way his voice lowered when he talked about his mother.

“She wasn’t always like this you know,” he said one evening. 

“Like what?”

“A beggar. We don’t actually need to beg. Harry, Sam, and I all bring in money. After my father died...she sort of went ballistic,” you heard him sniff back some congestion, probably forming from the suppressed tears. Your hand was already resting softly on his, but you moved it to his shoulder, letting your chin rest atop of it. The sound of crickets filled the uncertain silence, until he stood, holding out his hand, and invited you to a dance.

There was no music, no romantic set of strings to propel you into happily ever, but you felt as if you were at the fanciest ball of the kingdom as you swayed with him back and forth, your head resting right where his heart was. You felt your eyes droop, sitting halfway between open and closed, realizing the pulse of his heart matched the pulse of your crickets. 

“Tom,” you said, taking his face in your hands and letting his eyes fall into yours, “Let’s go. Let’s leave.” 

His hand found its place on your wrist, a gentle gesture, “Y/n...what?” 

“There has to be more to life than this. There has to be,” you looked past his eyes, onto the road that led to abyss, “Let’s get married and find somewhere else to be.” 

His eyebrows knitted together and he pulled your hands off of him, “I thought you understood.” 

 

You attempted to approach him, but he had shut you out, “What?”

 

“Love, I…” while your eyes were fixed on the future, his were locked on the small cottage where his brothers and mother were sleeping, “I can’t leave them.” 

You tried to ignore the excitement at arose when he called you love, and focused on the situation, “Why don’t we…bring them with us?” It was a pipe dream. A shot in the dark. You don’t know how you and Tom could inconspicuously move an entire family out of the tightly knit town that all of you had only known, but it was the only future where you and Tom ended up together, and you ended up free from chains you hadn’t asked for. 

He still held the concerned look, fixed on his home, his thoughts fixed on the people he cared about most. 

He was correct. You didn’t understand. You wished you could, in fact, you had always dreamed that you could understand what it was like to care so deeply for the members of your family. You had grown up in an environment where money was life and where you had to maintain the image that was laid out for you. An image of perfection. Your parents didn’t love you. You were unsure if your parents even wanted you, and while you didn’t understand Tom, Tom also didn’t understand you. 

“Love…” he called you the name again, this time it brought a tear to your eye.

“I don’t understand. I want to understand. You can help me understand. I’ve never known family, Tom. You can…” you inhaled, using all of your strength to keep your composure, “you can save me.”

His eyes finally moved, returning to you, where your tears had started to fall as wishes had from your lips. His thumbs moved them away, and his lips found their way to your forehead. 

“We’ll find a way.”

…

You had never known life outside of your town. You had never known an identity other than being the inventor’s daughter, and while Tom was afraid to pack up his entire family and move, it wasn’t until they reached a new town that you both realized how much of an impact a clean start could have.

By settling down in the town about twenty miles away from where you were born, you discovered how much more there was to your life than the money your parents had insisted it had been. Staring at your two-month-old daughter, you saw everything that you were made to be. You were a wife Tom, a sister to his brothers, a caretaker to his mother, and a mother to his child. Somehow, you had reached perfection in your world that had been filled with darkness and anger. Somehow you had discovered that true love that you thought was so far from your reach. 

The true love of family. 

Tom worked for a fisherman, and it wasn’t long before he worked his way up to becoming an apprentice. He had reached a status that was respected rather than spat upon. Seeing him come home with a smile on his face and a bag of silver dollars was priceless. 

You couldn’t remember when you started singing while you worked around the house, but you hummed your own made up tunes while you hung laundry, and while you cooked Tom’s mother lunch, and while you swept the floors. Then you sang to your little one when she was fussy, using lyrics that described how your life had changed for the better. 

I fell for the beggar’s son  
In the puddled porch with his shoes undone  
And the silver coin that had made him come  
Into the yellow light


End file.
